327: Chapter 327 Anyway, the country won't harm us.

After registration, everyone was divided into groups.

Each group consisted of a hundred people, numbered, and led by staff in camouflage uniforms to the parking lot behind the gymnasium.

Dozens of dark green buses were parked in the parking lot.

The windows were tinted with dark film, making it impossible to see inside from the outside.

Before boarding, everyone had to pass through the final checkpoint—the electronic device collection point.

On a long table, hundreds of transparent plastic bags were laid out, each with a label attached.

After placing their phones in the bags, staff wrote names and numbers on the labels, sealed them, and tossed them into storage bins behind them.

This part took the longest.

Not because the process was complicated, but because many people were reluctant to let go.

A woman in her forties stood in front of the table, clutching her phone. The screen was lit, showing a WeChat chat interface; the last message was from her daughter: "Mom, have you arrived?"

She stood there for about ten seconds before placing the phone into the bag.

Zhang Lei was in line behind her.

His phone was already turned off, and he handed it over directly.

The bus drove for a long time.

The dark tint on the windows turned everything into blurry shadows; occasionally, the streetlights of the highway could be seen flashing past through the gaps at the edge of the film.

No one knew where they were going.

It was very quiet on the bus; most people were sleeping or staring blankly.

Some wanted to chat but didn't know what to talk about—everyone was in the same situation: they had undergone genetic screening, received a notification, and came.

Sitting next to Zhang Lei was a young woman with glasses, looking to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with short hair and wearing a dark blue windbreaker.

She kept looking out the window, even though she couldn't see anything clearly.

"What do you do for a living?" Zhang Lei asked.

The woman turned her head. "Programmer. You?"

"Construction site safety officer. Used to be in the military."

"A veteran, huh." She nodded. "Then you should adapt faster than us."

"Adapt to what?"

"I don't know," she said. "I have a feeling we're not here to treat some genetic disease."

"Even if we aren't, so what? Anyway, the country won't harm us."

...

The bus stopped around three in the morning.

When the doors opened, cold air rushed in, waking everyone up.

Then it was time to get off.

Standing on a pitch-black open space, several high-power lights overhead were blindingly white, illuminating the surrounding thirty meters as if it were day; beyond that was bottomless darkness.

The air was cold, carrying a scent of mixed vegetation and earth.

Zhang Lei's nose twitched.

He smelled an indescribable scent—not any chemical raw material or plant smell he knew, but more like the slightly hot, dry aroma emitted by metal after being heated by the sun.

But it was the early hours of the morning; there was no sun.

Someone ahead was shouting numbers.

"Groups one to fifty of Sector A, go left! Groups fifty-one to one hundred of Sector A, go straight! Sector B, follow the guides through the right passage!"

The voice was shouted through a megaphone, carrying far in the open night.

Zhang Lei followed the crowd to the left.

The ground beneath his feet was a hardened surface, flat and without potholes.

Light poles were erected every twenty meters on both sides of the road, with numbered signs hanging on them.

They walked for about ten minutes.

A cluster of buildings appeared ahead.

They weren't tall, mostly three or four-story prefab houses, but there were many of them, row after row, arranged very neatly. Each prefab house had a doorplate hanging at the entrance, showing the sector and room numbers.

"Group seventeen of Sector A, this building! Go in and find your beds, put your luggage in the lockers, and assemble at six tomorrow morning!"

The guide stood at the entrance, shining a high-intensity flashlight into the building.

Zhang Lei walked in.

Inside the prefab house was a standard dormitory layout with bunk beds and eight sleeping spots, each with a set of bedding and a pillow folded on it.

On the bedside table sat a water cup and a schedule for the next day.

He found his bed—lower bunk, by the window.

He put his handbag into the storage locker under the bed and lay down.

A spring mattress, firm, but better than the ones in the construction site dorms.

The person in the next bed was already lying down—a man who looked about fifty, with graying hair, thin, wearing military-issued Training Fatigues, eyes closed but clearly not asleep.

Zhang Lei didn't say anything.

He lay on the bed, staring at the boards of the upper bunk.

The last time he lived in this kind of dormitory was eight years ago when he was in the military.

He closed his eyes.

Assemble at six tomorrow.

Zhang Lei woke up at five-forty.

Biological clock.

Formed during his time in the military, he hadn't lost it even eight years after being discharged.

He put on his Training Fatigues, folded his quilt, washed his face, and walked out of the prefab house at five-fifty-five.

It was just getting light outside.

The horizon was gray-blue; the sun hadn't risen yet, but there was enough light to see the surroundings clearly.

Zhang Lei stood at the entrance of the prefab house and looked around.

Then he froze.

It was the early morning hours when they arrived last night, and nothing could be seen.

Now he could.

The prefab area he was in was a temporary camp, with gray houses arranged in rows, numbering around several hundred.

At the end of the camp was a wall, not tall, about three meters.

Behind the wall was another world.

Not a metaphor.

About two hundred meters behind the wall stood a row of massive buildings.

They weren't prefab houses, nor the steel-structure workshops common on construction sites—they were real, colossal buildings.

Concrete-poured walls, metal-framed domes, surfaces covered in a dark gray Materials he couldn't name, reflecting the morning light.

Circular antenna arrays slowly rotated on top of the buildings, and the nearby iron towers were covered with equipment of various shapes.

Further away, he could see crane arms, chimneys, large ventilation ducts, and some metal structures whose purpose he couldn't identify at all.

The dimensions of these things were enormous.

Abnormally large.

Some of the metal structures were dozens of meters high, with matte dark gray surfaces, like giant windowless towers.

Zhang Lei's profession was a construction site safety officer; he dealt with buildings every day.

But he had never seen anything of this scale or material on any construction site.

His right hand instinctively reached for his pants pocket.

But the pocket was empty.

He remembered that his phone had been handed over before boarding the bus.

People around him had already begun stepping out of their prefab houses.

Like Zhang Lei, they stood at their doors, looking at the buildings behind the wall with various expressions.

Some had their mouths agape. Some squinted to identify the distant structures. Some reached into their pockets and then stopped, just like Zhang Lei.

The young man in the gray hoodie stood at the door of the next prefab house, his hand halfway up—he had already assumed the posture of taking a photo with a phone, fingers pinched, but there was nothing in his hand.

He realized it too, lowered his hand, and looked down at his empty palm.

"Shit," he muttered.

Six o'clock sharp.

The broadcast rang out.

"Attention all personnel: line up at the assembly grounds of each sector at 6:15, arranged by group number. At 6:30, we will proceed on foot to the Auditorium."